Here in the United States, I’ve hardly heard a peep about the first annual celebration of the International Day Against Homophobia. The event is a new holiday, created by activists and promoted with the help of the International Lesbian and Gay Association. Here’s why I hope that it catches on.
Ask many American gays in the Will & Grace generation about a new day for fighting homophobia and they might find the notion puzzling. Although gay bashing is still something that happens with regularity, few gays have been assaulted personally. When the GLBT newspapers aren’t reporting on the occasional bashing, sometimes it seems that the worst thing they can say about homophobia is that some high school kids were reprimanded for wearing a T-shirt with a gay slogan to school. We’ve come a long ways.
But outside of a handful of North American and Western European countries, homophobia is frequently pervasive, pernicious, inescapable, and deadly. There are regions of the world at less-developed stages of cultural awareness–and make no mistake, the lower you go down in terms of cultural development, the worse the fear and loathing of gays. At the bottom of the barrel are anti-gay states like Saudi Arabia that routinely execute men for consensual, private sexual relations.
Louis-Georges Tin, editor of the Dictionnaire de l’homophobie and promoter of a world day against homophobia, described the state of anti-gay sentiment in the world in an article on the ILGA website. Here’s a taste:
Homosexuality is discriminated against everywhere: in at least 80 countries, homosexual acts are forbidden by law (Algeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Armenia, Kuwait, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Bosnia…); in many countries, the punishment can exceed ten years in prison (Nigeria, Libya, Syria, India, Malaysia, Cuba, Jamaica…); sometimes, the law prescribes life imprisonment (Guyana, Uganda). And in a dozen countries, capital punishment may be actually carried out (Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia…). In Africa, recently, several presidents have brutally acted on their will to combat personally this “scourge” which they consider “anti-African”. Even in other countries where homosexuality is not considered a crime, persecutions have multiplied. In Brazil, for example, death squads and skin heads spread terror: 1,960 homophobic murders have been officially reported between 1980 and 2000. In these conditions, it is difficult to think that “tolerance” is gaining ground. On the contrary, in the majority of these nations, homophobia appears more violent today than ever before. The tendency is not, therefore, towards a general improvement, far from it.
And international human rights organizations that have done so much for the rights of women, ethnic and racial minorities have been unusually slow in responding to this particular attack on human dignity. So the ILGA is striving to create a new cultural channel by which to raise awareness of homophobia on an international level. Activists selected May 17 as the day for the event based on the fact that on May 17, 1990, the General Assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. The new holiday has already been the source of activism in ultrahomophobic places like Hong Kong, which held its first gay rights demonstration.
Cultural activism is a vitally important dimension in the struggle against homophobia. Something as simple as creating a new holiday and getting it on the calendars of countries around the world–and the UN’s calendar–is a profound act of courage and wisdom. Unfortunately, many gay activists are likely to dismiss such efforts as ineffectual or as a diversion from more important things. These activists would give all their attention to the social/political angle, and neglect the cultural angle.
There’s another reason why the International Day Against Homophobia is a cause for celebration: it’s one of the most interesting recent attempts to think globally about a problem (homophobia) that has mostly been addressed only on a much more ethnocentric scale. Asking most gays (or any other minority) to think globally is a hard business. We have too many other things to worry about, and local issues usually press their way to the top of the pile. But this creative step is a good start towards helping gays–and the rest of us–think and act from a worldcentric level of concern. FULL STEAM AHEAD, baby!
If you want to support the International Day Against Homophobia, you can sign this online petition.
About Joe Perez
